"Go back to Cairo by the first train, and say, 'It is well—God willing he will come.'" And then, in the fever of his new purpose, he went off to the mosque.
There he first called upon the people to repeat the Shehadah, the Moslem creed, and after that he administered an oath to them—never, by the grace of God and His Prophet, to reveal what he was going to say except to true believers, and only to them on their taking a like oath of secrecy and fidelity.
The people repeated in chorus the words he spoke in a loud voice, and concluded—each man with his right hand on the Koran, and his left upraised to heaven—with a solemn Amen!
Then Ishmael told them everything—how the time had come for their deliverance from bondage and corruption to the glorious liberty of the children of God—how, as the people of the Prophet had returned from Medina to Mecca, so they were to go up from Khartoum to Cairo—how he was to go before them, and they, under another leader, were to follow him, and God would give them a great reward.
At this news the poor, unlettered people grew delirious in their excitement, each man interpreting Ishmael's message according to his own vision of the millennium. Some saw themselves turning the hated foreigner out of Egypt; others were already in imagination taking possession of Cairo and all the rich lands of the valley of the Nile; while a few, like Ishmael himself, were happy enough in the expectation of prostrating themselves at the feet of the divinely appointed guide who was to redeem the world from sorrow and sin.
As soon as prayers were over, Black Zogal ran back to old Mahmud's house with a wild story of flashes of light which he saw darting from Ishmael's head while he spoke from the pulpit.
Helena heard him. She was sitting alone in the guest-room, tortured by contending thoughts. "Am I a wicked woman?" she asked herself, remembering how easily she had taken advantage of Ishmael's fanatical ecstasy. But again she hardened her heart against Ishmael, telling herself that his simplicity was cunning, and that he was an impostor who had gone so far with his imposture that he could even impose upon himself.
How could one who had committed a crime, a cruel and cowardly crime, be anything but a villain? A madman, perhaps, but all the same a villain.
And then other thoughts thronged upon her, sweet and bitter thoughts, with memories of Gordon, of her father, of the early days in Grasmere, of the short morning of happiness in Cairo, and of the brief rift in the clouds of her life that was now plunged in perpetual night.
Thus she stifled every qualm of conscience by going back and back to the same plea, the same support—